The new year is upon us and we all hopeful that it will be very different to 2020!
This week is a great time to start planning your 2021 and making sure you make the most of the New Year.
Given the current climate one key focus for all of us is undoubtedly reducing stress and building resilience & wellbeing.
Resilience is having the ability to bounce back and sustaining hope, optimism and self-efficacy in any given situation.
It’s much more than just about health, it’s also about resilience in your work, business, health, relationships, family, financial situation. So take some time for yourself and make a list of the most important things you’d like to accomplish in 2021.
Try to identity 1-3 primary goals and all other goals are working towards them.
So many people set New Years resolutions around this time, but a large majority will drop them within 1-2 weeks? Why is this? There’s clearly more to it than just setting a goal.
In reality setting a goal is just the beginning. It takes much more than that to make it happen. Here is a 3 step plan:
1. For each goal make a detailed plan
2. stay focused and execute your plan daily
3. track your progress and make adjustments when necessary.
The truth is we tend to let our past influence our future more than we realise. Indeed 90% of every present day and our future is influenced by our past habits of mind (emotions, thoughts), behaviours and events. Think about that for a moment, 90%! And certain types of actions/events that were less than good for us can have more of a potent impact on our current and future wellbeing than others.
So we’re trying to change our future whilst being chained to our past. Some of the past may be great and empowering for your future resilient self and others may not.
Turn Over A New LEAF is about empowering people to break free from disempowering chains of the past in order to strive forward to a more resilient future self.
We know that in reality we are creatures of comfort and for some it can be uncomfortable to change. To others it can be near on impossible to break free of that comfort zone, no matter how unhealthy or unwanted that comfort zone is.
[So our good intentions can be thwarted due to being too attached to our unconscious memory of past habits. ]
We also know that our brain kinds of operates like the search function on google. If we put in a question with a #word we get an answer and a stream of focused information relating to that.
If we consciously ask ourselves ... What if I act from the #best-version-of-myself every day this year? What if I show more #courage in my life every day? what if I just took one bite sized chunk at a time every day this year? What if I exceed my own expectations?
The more we ask such questions the more we hard wire our mind and focus to get outcomes in line with those #empoweringwords.
However we may not realise that underneath these questions we may have another stream of less than helpful #selflimitingwords and questions driven by our unconscious mind like what if i fail? What if I’m not confident enough? What if I’m not courageous enough? What if i don’t manage to pull it off?
So our brain operates on 2 levels. Our conscious mind, we’re more in control of, and our unconscious mind tends to have a hidden influence on the outcomes we get. Think of the conscious mind as like the desk top screen on you computer and your unconscious mind as your operating system. You can change the look of your desktop screen and the operating system can be reprogrammed.
In the beginning of setting your goals your motivation will be high and your deliberate attempts to focus on #empowering-words and questions are easier and more prominent in the mind. As the initial novelty wears off, life gets busy or stress steps in and your motivation can start to drop. This is when your default unconscious stream of #self-limiting-words and questions start to pop up.
It’s at this time you need self leadership strategies to keep you going and train your brain to let go of those #self-limiting-words and to refocus your mind back on the #empowering-words. Hence why it’s so important to be aware of your #words if you want to make real progress in your life in 2021.
The ideal is that our unconscious and conscious mind work seamlessly together to generate #empowering-words and questions aligned to our goals. This way our internal tides are going in the same direction. Making goal achievement easier. Remember If you can conceive the goal in your mind this is a good start. Converting that into self belief in both your conscious and unconscious mind will help your to actualise your goals.
To this end I recommend you update the 3 step process above to the following 7 step goal actualising process:
1. Start writing a journal for 30-90 days (invest in a nice one or just use a notepad or an app if you want to get going quickly … give yourself permission to write in it every day, with one day off, if you feel like it)
2. Ask yourself 1-3 things that you deeply want to happen in your life in 2021 and beyond ...
3. take each one and write down your deepest why 7+ times (use the attached tool)
4. Set 1-3 primary resilience building goals and 1-3 ‘linked’ goals - write them down with CREATE in mind use tool attached):
- Concise (clarity of your goal - a statement of what it looks, feels, sounds like when achieved),
- Realistic (state how this is within your control and circle of influence and note down what could get in the way and how to address them)
- Ecological (you and who else benefits? Individuals/community/country/world and who’s supporting you?)
- Achievable (confirm how this stretching you out of comfort zone in an achievable way),
- Time specific (set a date for completion and review)
- Evidence and End step (how will you evidence progress and celebrate it/what you will be grateful for?)
5.. Write a detailed plan of how you want things to happen boiling it down to what exactly is going to happen by whom, where with what resources and by when.
6. Stay focused and execute the plan daily
7. track your progress and measure the gain you have made in your journal daily (give yourself permission to have one day of off per week) - Observe and make adjustments as the need arises e.g. plan on how to to address any external obstacle that arise or let go of any inner tension or obstacles using Havening and re-envision the progress and outcome going really well again.
If you’d like help with this 7 step process please feel free to drop me a line.
Also we have free workshops coming up about Havening Techniques that you may be interested in. Feel free to find out more by clicking on the image below ....
